Night-o-Candy

I know lots of Christians disapprove of Halloween, and I can understand some of their reasons. But somehow that's a bandwagon I've never been able to clamber onto. It just seems somehow unsporting not to participate in a great candy giveaway, especially after having been the beneficiary of said giveaway as a child.

Last night I was especially glad not to have too many moral compunctions about it because it was really fun. Sam and I met back at the house at the witching hour, and the weather was in its finest fall form: in the 70s, crisp and clear, with the leaves just beginning to turn and that great filtered autumn-evening light. We live on a wide, brick street of pretty, historic houses, and from the front steps of our porch, we watched what looked like a costume parade of all the kiddies. As they approached our house, they would break away and bolt or stomp or stagger or swagger up our walk, plastic pumpkins extended, and we'd give a handout from the enormous bowl we had filled (if my sister is reading this, it's the bowl you gave me for making stuffing a few Christmases ago--yes, that much candy!).

Some of the kids were adorable, like the little SpongeBob who waited patiently behind a group of older kids and then, when they left, burbled joyfully, "Is it my turn now?!" Another little girl's costume had her draped in cobwebs, and when I said, "You're just covered in cobwebs!" she said, "I'm sorry!" and I wanted to call her back for extra candy for being cute. Some were creative, like an entirely homemade Tin-Man costume (no aluminum foil in sight--it was much classier). Some of them were a little too old to be trick-or-treating, while still too young to be dressed like prostitutes (if that's ever appropriate . . . hmmm). A few of the kids were kind of sad to behold--a number of them didn't have costumes at all, just a dirty pillowcase that they held out with a mumbled "trick-or-treat," if that--but the neat thing was, they were getting candy! Our friends Andrew and Noel, who are also now our across-the-street neighbors, came and sat with us and helped us sneak candy from the bowl.

Then we watched Knocked Up, which was another kind of scary. Ugh. I hope that was some comedic exaggeration. It would make for a very effective Afterschool Special on safe sex.